HOW KIRSTY HALVED HER WEIGHT
Some view weight-loss surgery as an easy way out for people struggling with obesity. But, as RUSTY WOODGER discovers, a Highton woman knows better than most just how life-changing it can be.
KIRSTY Young needed to do something. Urgently. She was obese. Morbidly obese.
If she didn’t take action, she knows the outcome could have been catastrophic.
“I guess … I’d be dead pretty soon,” she said.
It was not even five years ago when the Highton woman weighed in at 167kg. Desperate to turn her life around, she made the decision to undergo vertical sleeve gastrectomy.
The procedure, a form of weight-loss surgery, involved 80 per cent of her stomach being removed.
When you look at Ms Young today, it’s hard to reconcile her image with that of a few short years ago.
She now weighs just 83.5kg — literally half her size before the operation — and while this achievement is not merely the result of surgery, Ms Young knows it has played a big part.
She laments not doing it earlier, admitting she was influenced by common perceptions about weight-loss procedures.
“There’s a whole lot of stigma around weight-loss surgery; that it’s the easy way out or that it’s somehow cheating the system,” Ms Young said.
“I was sort of sucked into that stigma and I really wish I hadn’t been, because I would’ve accessed that a whole lot sooner if I didn’t think that I’d be criticised for taking that option.
“At the end of the day, if you don’t change your lifestyle or your habits, you’re still not going to lose weight — even if you have weight-loss surgery.
“It really is such a temporary tool to lose weight and an opportunity to change your lifestyle in that first 6-12 months after surgery.”
WHEN you’re living with morbid obesity, it is easy to feel like an outcast.
Before her weight-loss journey began, simple day-today tasks served to remind Ms Young of the stark difference between her and other people.
“I didn’t fit into society and there was that everyday reminder that I didn’t fit in,” she said.
“I was commuting to Melbourne five days a week. I was on the train and I didn’t particularly fit into one train seat, and I’d always have to squish myself up to make sure I wasn’t impeding on anyone else’s comfort.
“Overseas travel was something that I couldn’t really do — at least without awkwardness and embarrassment — because the seatbelt on planes wouldn’t fit me. I would have to ask for a seatbelt extender if I did want to travel.”
Ms Young traces the significant weight gain to her teenage years, citing her own “fairly poor” body image that she sustained throughout high school.
At that stage, she was not much bigger than other girls around her, but she always felt bigger, and those feelings planted the seeds for what was to come.
“I let those feelings of poor image and self-worth kind of fester,” she said. “After going through uni, I had a desk job, so I was sitting down all the time and the weight was piling on and, with that, those feelings of almost hopelessness in my body.
“Self-worth was getting lower. Self-confidence really took a hit then as well. I think in my first year of that job I’d put on 40kg just from feeling pretty rotten about myself.”
Ms Young said she would try to make herself feel better by reaching for convenience foods. On occasions, the binge eating included stopping through multiple drivethrough fast food stores on a single trip.
She was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and high blood pressure — which are both now gone — and struggled with sore knees and joints due to her weight. She also had an unexplained pain that, although never diagnosed, forced her into regular visits to a doctor.
“He could see that I was struggling and, over those years, just getting worse and worse,” Ms Young said. “I think he’d been recommending weight-loss surgery for sort of four years before I accepted a referral.
“He was ultimately saying if I wanted to live a long and healthy life, I needed to lose the weight.”
In August 2016, she underwent the operation to remove most of her stomach.
“If I didn’t take action, I don’t think I would’ve been able to maintain full-time work,” Ms Young said.
“I would certainly be a whole lot unhealthier. I would probably have diabetes rather than prediabetes.”
And the worst case scenario? “I’d be dead.”
SINCE the surgery, Ms Young has become immersed in regular physical exercise and has embraced a vegan diet. Her relationship with food has changed drastically, too, from an “all or nothing” approach.
“Before surgery, I would restrict myself and say I’m eating healthily from now on: no more chocolate, no more biscuits, no more chips, which then kind of fetishised that sort of food,” she said.
“It meant that when I did have a biscuit, I would end up eating a packet of biscuits, just because once the dam breaks, it all just starts flooding in.
“Now I just allow myself to have those things occasionally … I satisfy the craving. I allow my body to have that on the occasion that I want to have something. It’s definitely created a much healthier mindset around food, which I didn’t have before then.”
Reflecting on her health journey, Ms Young said she now felt happier and more comfortable being herself.
By sharing her story, she wants others to know that nobody is ever “too far gone” and that, if she can do it, anyone can.
“You are always worthy of living the life that you deserve,” she said.
“But, also, you’re more than your body. Whether you are 167kg or 83.5kg, you are worthy of anything and everything you want.
“Sometimes it’s hard to realise that.”